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Welcome to my blog!

I work in transport consultancy. Much of my professional work is focused on supporting transport agencies, governments and city leaders who have any number of transport challenges to tackle. In part, the solutions to many of these challenges require some form of behaviour change by the users of the system. To date, however, the transport sector has had limited success in changing behaviours. We might want more people to leave the car at home, to travel outside of the peak periods, or to be safe when cycling…

I have come to learn how important it is to understand exactly who the people are whose behaviours we want to change, and what lifestyle needs they have. ‘Service Design’ and ‘Design Thinking’ have become big influences on the approaches I take in my work. I was recently inspired by Tim Brown’s book, Change by Design. In it he talks about three elements of a successful design program – insight, observation and empathy. This means we need to get out into the world and be observant about what people do in their everyday lives or, indeed, to watch what they don’t do. We need to understand norms in behaviour and extremes. Moreover, we need to understand why people are doing what they doing.

This blog is my attempt to better understand human behaviours – inside and outside of the transport sphere. I intend to observe my own behaviours and the behaviours of the people I come into contact with. I also want to share my own research and the research of others that I come across. I hope that I can utilise all of this knowledge to find the best solutions for our transport challenges.

(A little side note: All views expressed on this blog are entirely my own)